Everyday People (12 page)

The corner of Moreland was empty, the streetlight burnt out—no, broken. He helped Chris over the curb. It was like a mission; the two of them didn't say anything. A car headed up Moreland toward them, its headlights searching beneath the trees, and Eugene imagined B-Mo's boys riding down on Nene, weapons ready, windows rolled down.

It was harder getting Chris up the stairs at Nene's Granmoms'. His back hurt from work, and he had to stretch after.

“Sorry,” Chris said.

“S'all right, I got ya.”

Nene's Granmoms asked them into the living room. That gap-toothed smile, those old glasses—it was like she never changed. “Now don't go away, I've got something for
you,” she said, patting Eugene on the shoulder, and vanished into the kitchen.

Chris looked around the walls, covered with framed paintings. Above the fireplace hung an Oriental rug with an intricate pattern. In the corner stood a black laquered piano. The sofa was black leather, with a heavy glass end table, a fern in a crystal planter. Nene's Granmoms always kept a good-looking house. It made the jump from Moreland even stranger, like the two didn't fit.

She came back with a tray of cheese and crackers and water for all of them, taking the end of the couch by Chris's chair. “Eugene,” she said, “I wanted to thank you for coming the other day.” She looked at Chris sympathetically. “I know you would have been there if you could.”

“I'm sorry about Nene,” Chris said.

“Thank you,” she said, and touched his knee.

Chris held the package out. “We brought something for you.”

“That's sweet, you didn't have to,” she said, making a face, then took it. She peeled the wrapping paper away and turned it over to see Nene. She sat like that a minute, looking at him. “Oh,” she said, “it's beautiful.”

“Chris did it.”

“Chris, oh,” she said, “thank you,” and stood up to take him in a hug, still holding the picture, and all Eugene could think of was Nene doing his Godzilla routine. She came over to him and he held her, breathing in a whiff of baby powder and Dixie Peach, a smell he remembered from church and birthdays.

She looked for a place to put it. “There's not enough room on these walls. I'll have to move something.”

She seemed happy, and Eugene thought he'd at least done something constructive today. Darrin would be proud of him. They ate the cheese and crackers and drank their water, answered her questions about their parents. He didn't ask if Little Nene was home until they had their coats on.

“Who—Leonard? I'm lucky he came to see his brother. He's another one, out all hours, gallivanting around town.”

Eugene didn't ask why she couldn't stop him. He'd run the same game on his Moms when he was sixteen, then served Pops when he tried to get in his business. He just said to let Leonard know that he'd asked after him.

“Leonard,” Chris said when they were outside again. “What's up with that?”

“She really liked your picture.”

“I just thought, you know.”

The corner was still empty, and they rolled up Allegheny to Spofford under the one streetlight. Chris's chair made a whir like a remote-control car.

“Those steps are gonna be a bitch,” Chris said.

“I'll handle it,” Eugene said, and he did, pulling him up backwards, one at a time.

Moms was waiting for them. She wanted to know how it went, and they told her. “Good,” she said. “That woman, what she's been through.”

Chris looked up at him. Neither of them had to remind her of what she'd been through with them; they just nodded.

Chris whirred into his room. Pops was watching TV with a beer, Moms reading the paper at the kitchen table.
Eugene used the bathroom, unloading some of that water, then announced he was going out.

“Where?” Moms asked.

“Church. I told Reverend Skinner I'd help set up for practice.”

“How late, you think?”

“Not late. Maybe ten.”

“You be careful,” she said.

“You stay out of trouble,” Pops threw in, but he was gone, already on the stairs.

He started with Spofford, circling the block, checking out the crowd hanging in front of the Liberty Grill. Too old, and the cops always cruised through. He swept the four corners at Taine and Moreland, then headed back toward Nene's Granmoms'. There was a crew working Allegheny under the busted light, a punk Little Nene's size in a Hornets jacket and a Marlins cap, but when Eugene got close he could see it wasn't him.

“Whassup?” the boy challenged him.

“S'up wit chu?” Eugene said, coming on hard, putting on that yard face. One of his toy-ass partners was giving him the red eye. “I'm looking for my boy Little Nene.”

The Marlins cap flashed the Trey sign.

Eugene laughed and returned it. “A'ight, but I don't play that no more. I'm too old for that shit.”

“You sposed to be some kinda O.G. or something,” the boy said, looking his suit up and down.

“Big Nene and me were partners.”

“I'm real sorry. I ain't seen Little Nene round tonight. He might be down Lenora.”

“A'ight,” Eugene said, and traded the handshake. “Tell him I was looking for him.”

He walked on down Moreland, sure of himself now, on a mission, square business. It was clear, the streetlights throwing shadows into parked cars. There was no one at Lenora, only a cat slipping across the street. He kept going, past Larimer and Thompson and Paulson, thinking of what he'd say to him. Nothing about God or anything big, just the facts of the matter, like Darrin laying it out in group.

Lowell was empty, and Mayflower, but he kept on, block by block, checking every possible spot. He remembered Nene and him searching the carpet on their hands and knees, running their fingernails over it like a comb. That last night they were so fucked up it didn't occur to them to stop. It was a good thing too. After like half an hour, Nene pulled a chunk out of the couch. He pinched it between his fingers like a diamond, smiled like he knew it was there all along. And he did, they both did. That was the lesson of ghostbusting. You had to have faith. You had to believe that if you just kept looking hard enough, eventually you'd find what you needed.

HE CAME TO
her because his mother was going through some hard times moneywise. Of course it was not money really; there was a man who'd almost married her, a lost job, a car stolen from their parking lot. The schools, the neighborhood, even the weather seemed to play into the decision. Milwaukee was a city with no jobs, Yvonne said, and cold in winter, ice reaching into the gray lake. Maybe it was time to try Chicago (Miss Fisk didn't say it was the same lake, the same cold, the same city finally). Yvonne called her night after night, sometimes swearing bitterly, sometimes crying, and Miss Fisk could not say no.

He was ten when he came, a wick-thin boy with a high forehead and tiny ears. He had turn, a brisk way of saying “Ma'am” and “You're welcome” that she recognized as her own—a gift her daughter had passed on to him. He was a bright child, talkative, and quick to pick up on what she needed. He didn't cry when his mother got in the dented Chevy and drove away. At supper he ate everything on his
plate and then asked if he could watch TV if he did the dishes. He wanted the bedroom next to hers, he said, and that first night how could she deny him?

Nothing changed. Maybe it was because she was a grandmother, ready to give everything, nothing left to save up for. She flattered herself that he favored her; wasn't it plain in the slope of his forehead, the just-enough-to-whistle gap in his big front teeth? He knew when she needed to be alone and when she needed a little sugar. He could always get what he wanted from her, not like Yvonne. She wanted to think it wasn't weakness on her part, that she didn't give in to him just because he was a child. But didn't she secretly smile to herself in the kitchen, making cornbread for him, thinking she'd been blessed? He was a gift she hadn't known she'd needed. He was hers.

He was her good boy. That's what she wanted to say when the police came and then the one reporter from the
Courier.
Smart as day in school too. She didn't know how he got mixed up in all that nonsense. But it wasn't completely true, no, not by that time—she'd found things in his closet, tucked deep in the toes of his winter boots—and so she told the reporter it was a shame, that just last week he'd started a program at the Vo-Tech, he and Chris (the other boy, she said, so he'd know), the two of them together. Graphic design. He wanted to be an artist, she said, wondering if that really was true.

Yes, it was true, an artist. Why did she have to question everything now, as if his life with her had been false, had never happened?

There were people who needed his liver. The doctor said there was nothing else they could do, so if she would just please go ahead and sign the papers they could begin the procedure. She needed to call her daughter, she said, and then there was no answer, the phone ringing in Milwaukee, in the new apartment she'd visited just once, marveling at the plush, just-vacuumed carpet, the frost-free refrigerator, the view of the freezing lake—marveling at Yvonne's hard-won success, after all her troubles. Benny only had another year in school, and he was on the honor roll again. It didn't make sense to take him away from his friends.

“Legally you
are
his guardian,” the lady in the office reminded her, and turned the form so Miss Fisk could write on the line. It wasn't like he was alive and she was saying take him off the machine; he was already dead, the blood stopped, his body cooling. There was someone who would die if she didn't sign this, that's what it came down to. She was not a selfish woman, Lord knows. She would do anything to save another mother this pain. Then why did she have to call Yvonne again?

The woman turned her phone to Miss Fisk, and she punched in the number, then waited. She pictured the empty apartment and wondered where Yvonne had gone off to. The corner store with its Miller sign and its high-priced milk. She thought of her walking the dark streets, smoking her cigarettes one after another like when she was angry. Was it raining there too? The phone rang five, six times. She put the receiver down and looked at the woman. “You say we need to do this now.”

He was ten when he came and seventeen when he was taken from her, but there was another time before that when he was a baby, her first grandchild. She'd flown to Minnesota to be with Yvonne when the time came. She wasn't in the room, but she was right outside, waiting with her third awful cup of coffee, reading the classified ads from a discarded
Star-Tribune
as Herman stared out over the city. He was her boyfriend, and Miss Fisk knew he wouldn't be around to see this child raised right, but there was nothing she could do about it and every time she said something, Yvonne would stop calling. And he did leave, eventually. He was still in St. Paul, still doing something in radio (she never knew quite what it was that he did). He came to the funeral, bending to her, accepting her arms as he never had before, saying, “Bertice,” sadly, as if there were no words.

And where were you, she wanted to say. Call yourself a father. You have no right to grieve over him—no right. Benny never liked you because he knew what you are, and that is a no 'count man who will never come to nothing.

Instead, she held on to him, told him to take care of Yvonne, something he'd never done, and never would.

They laid him to rest beside her Sherman, in the plot they'd bought for Yvonne. It seemed strange, standing there as the motor lowered the box; it was the first time Sherman had met Benny. They were neighbors now, and she liked the idea. Sherman would have liked him, mostly. In fact, if Sherman had been around, none of this would have happened.

But it did, it had. She had to remind herself sometimes, warming Rashaan's formula, that Benny was not going to be home in a few hours. When Vanessa came by after work and thanked her and took Rashaan home, cooing to him, tickling his chin, the house went quiet, only the clinking of the radiators, and she remembered everything. She had to turn the radio on to stop it.

“Yes, ma'am,” the woman said, “it's no good after twelve hours,” and still Miss Fisk hesitated, didn't pick up the pen. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with him, just the bump on his head, a few scrapes. How many hours had it been—two, three?

Some days she escaped completely, reading to Rashaan on the sofa, fixing his strained peas, but then he left and the night spread endlessly in front of her, the rotation of the earth—the entire universe—her enemy. After Sherman, after Yvonne left for college, she thought she'd learned how to be alone. Then Benny came and changed that, dragged her back into the world of the living. Now the opposite was happening. Dusk congealed in the trees, crows flew over. She walked from window to window, stood with a hand gathering back the drapes, peering out over Spofford as if expecting him to come home for supper, his boots muddy from the new busway. Once, suddenly waking up in the present, she saw some of the Coleman children eating ice cream on the sidewalk, pointing up at her; when she waved, they scattered as if she was a witch.

“The tissue is what's important,” the doctor said when they called him in. “The individual cells can live for a time
by themselves, but eventually without nourishment from the blood, they die.”

Yes, Miss Fisk wanted to say, I understand, but can't I just call one more time?

Supper was the hardest. Rashaan was with Vanessa again, and she could hear the clock above the sink tick off the minutes. The news was always the same. Sometimes she didn't make anything, just reached into the fridge, lifted the tinfoil and picked at a cold chicken, a butt of ham. She'd found a frozen macaroni she liked, and two or three times a week she preheated the oven and slid the little pan in, actually thankful for such convenience. It was thick, the crust on top brown and crunchy, the cheese inside steaming and heavy, burning the roof of her mouth. She ate until it was all gone, and then, disgusted with herself (remembering the velvet bite of her mother's, the pride she took in her own), she scrubbed the little tin and stacked it with the rest under the sink, thinking she could use them for something. For what?